---
title: A compass needle is a small magnet that turns to point north, becaus… — Maps, plans and the compass · tree and pragmatics
description: A compass needle is a small magnet that turns to point north, because the Earth itself acts like a giant magnet. Who acts: compass needle, small magnet, Earth. A sentence of the lesson «Maps, plans and the compass» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmat
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/41-maps-and-compass/12/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [World](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/) / [Maps, plans and the compass](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/41-maps-and-compass/) / 12

# Maps, plans and the compass, sentence 12

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A compass needle is a small magnet that turns to point north, because the Earth itself acts like a giant magnet.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** compass needle, small magnet, Earth · **What happens:** be, turn, point, act · **To what, where:** small magnet

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Maps, plans and the compass» of the world course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (compass needle, small magnet, Earth), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:041-maps-and-compass.lesson:12
# text = A compass needle is a small magnet that turns to point north, because the Earth itself acts like a giant magnet.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 041-maps-and-compass.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R7-rel-agree ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	compass	compass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	needle	needle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	magnet	magnet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	9	nsubj	_	_
9	turns	turn	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	point	point	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	north	north	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
14	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	Earth	Earth	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
17	itself	itself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Emp|Reflex=Yes	16	nmod:unmarked	_	_
18	acts	act	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=9:conj
19	like	like	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	giant	giant	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	magnet	magnet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | a compass needle | a small magnet |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **turn** | present | a small magnet |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **point** | to-infinitive | a small magnet *not said here* |  |  |  |  | north *property* | vn wink-40.3.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **act** | present | the Earth  Earth |  |  |  |  | like a giant magnet | vn masquerade-29.6-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Agent like magnet=Attribute |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

<!-- div src -->

**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:world:041-maps-and-compass.lesson:12`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R7-rel-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Maps, plans and the compass, 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/41-maps-and-compass/11/)
- next →: [Maps, plans and the compass, 13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/41-maps-and-compass/13/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/41-maps-and-compass/)